WCR This Week

From the category archives: WCR This Week

NEW ORLEANS - Just as Moses descended from Mount Sinai with Ten Commandments chiselled on two stone tablets, the rules laid out for potent peaching while not etched in permanent marker, are boundaries worthy of respect: six to eight minutes for a Sunday homily, three to five minutes for a weekday sermon.

"The idea is not so much 'brevity' as it is not taking longer than you need," said Deborah Wilhelm, a doctoral student with a focus on preaching at the Aquinas Institute of Theology, who led a recent eight-day workshop on preaching here.

VANCOUVER — You don't have to be a Broadway actor to be a good priest, says Father Edward Danylo Evanko, pastor of the Dormition of Our Mother of God Church in Richmond. "But," he adds, lapsing into a Manhattan Yiddish accent, "it wouldn't hoit."

Evanko was an actor on Broadway, as well as in Hollywood, in television and film, for over 30 years before a seemingly chance conversation at Vancouver's Holy Rosary Cathedral pointed him to the priesthood. Once a priest, he thought he had put acting behind him, but he was wrong.

VATICAN CITY — While priestly celibacy is increasingly misunderstood and even under attack, the discipline continues to be a call to a whole-hearted response to God's love, said Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

"The celibacy of priests, as well as of bishops, has been put into question today with growing virulence because of sexual abuse, including of minors, committed by clerics," Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, cardinal told the bishops of Brazil.